With the Formula One season about to resume on its eight-race run to the finish line, Lewis Hamilton has made it clear that the edge that has increasingly permeated his relationship with his team-mate Nico Rosberg has taken on a more personal tone, as the duo’s battle for the world championship hangs in the balance.

The Mercedes drivers had a formal meeting, along with team officials, on Thursday to discuss events at the Hungarian Grand Prix, when Hamilton ignored a team order to let Rosberg through. Hamilton has since claimed to have been happy with the team’s response and that he wants to move on.

Hamilton said: “There are different views on what is a team player. When it means waving your team-mate through, that for sure is not. I want to win – and be the best team player when it means that. I work with the team. I am not hiding anything from Nico. He has all my data. I never ever have asked my guys, ‘don’t show that to Nico.’ I want him to be at his best, because it is more painful when you are at your best and getting beat. That’s more painful.”

Rosberg leads Hamilton by 11 points in the world championship, the latter having suffered the lion’s share of misfortune with two DNFs and two scything recovery drives from the back of the grid in Germany and Hungary. But Hamilton has also made errors, particularly in qualifying, that must now be banished to put the pressure back on Rosberg.

Mercedes have yet to clarify whether they will employ team orders again but it would be unsurprising were they to back a single driver to ensure they lockout the world championship. Hamilton and Rosberg will be aware the team will go with the points leader and that establishing that lead is now crucial.

Hamilton has placed this task in the context of potential orders but with a forthright determination he must replicate on track. “I want to win the championship through my ability and fair opportunity,” he said. “I sure don’t want to finish second and be known as a nice guy. I want to win.”

This is the perfect track to do so. Hamilton has won here only once in 2010, a record he will want to improve on a real drivers’ circuit, with Eau rouge and Pouhon offering an extra frisson of excitement this year because of the additional torque available as drivers go back on the throttle. Qualifying today will be nip and

With the two drivers’ battle about to resume on track, the Toro Rosso signing Max Verstappen, who is 16 years old and will become the youngest F1 driver when he makes his debut next year at 17, had a taste of what is to come on making his first appearance in the paddock at Spa.

Verstappen, the son of former F1 driver Jos who raced for a variety of teams between 1994 and 2003 will replace Jean-Eric Vergne, having been driving single seater racing cars for only 10 months, making his debut testing a Formula Renault in October 2013.

This is increasingly the new look of F1, Vergne himself is still only 24, while Verstappen looks as if, admittedly in another age, he should be scrumping apples. But the reception among the drivers with whom he will compete next year has been generally positive.

“He’s driven racing cars before, he knows exactly what he’s doing,” Jenson Button noted, although he conceded that when he began his career at Williams he believed he was not ready for F1. “I was 20 when I arrived in the sport,” he said. “I was ready at about 23 probably, but I took the opportunity because I thought it might not come again.”

Button said he initially turned down the chance to be a F1 driver: “Frank [Williams] called me up, I was in the pub with my mates having a pint and he asked: ‘Do you think you’re ready for Formula One?’ I answered ‘no, definitely not.’ I called my dad and told him and he said ‘you are kidding me – call him back and tell him you are ready.’ I said ‘I’m not,’ he replied: ‘Tell him you are.’ I did and he invited me to the factory and that’s how it all started.”

Button is not surprised, then, that Verstappen has leapt at his chance. “For anyone who comes into the sport if you are given the opportunity you have to take it,” he said. “Because you don’t know if another one will come along.”

Hamilton and Rosberg shared the honours in Friday’s practice sessions, with the British driver going into Saturday’s qualifying with an advantage of six tenths of a second over his team-mate in FP2 after Rosberg’s nine hundredths from the first session.

Marussia have reinstated Max Chilton for the race having dropped the British driver while attempting to resolve “contractual issues” on Thursday.